The politics of laborers have made them a vital and vibrant part of American history. One has only to study the underlying political causes of the first labor movements to understand why. Few will doubt that one of the most important parts of labor history occurred with the working-class experience in Chicago from the 1920s to the late 30s. During this era, many workers petitioned the government and employers for changes. Some groups of those workers were successful and others were not. Lizabeth Cohen, in Making a New Deal, takes a different approach from traditional labor historians. She examines the effects that ethnic workers had on the successes and failures of the earliest labor movements. Though striking workers were not endemic to Chicago, labor historians who begin their research in that city will be getting one national story (Cohen, 7). There are several reasons why Chicago is a logical beginning. In many ways, the nascent laborers of Chicago set the groundwork for the numerous benefits contemporary workers have. Earlier labor movements, like so much other history, were centered in Chicago (Cohen, 7). It just so happens that extraordinary political changes in labor took place during the interwar period, and Chicago was the largest industrial city in America then (Cohen, 7). Because Chicago was replete with ethnicity, it is also possible to conduct comparative labor studies. Finally, other than New York, no city had as many strikes as Chicago (Cohen, 12).By 1919, America had its first major strike in which four million peopleor one in every fiveAmericans participated (Cohen, 12). These workers sought to protect their jobs and to solidify their wartime wages. One tool for doing so, of course, was the strike. Another was organizing a political party. Although local, futile, and ephemeral, a new political party was formed with the sole purpose of incorporating change into the common laborers working environment. Its candidates h...
